Re: Holiday Special

Miba wrote:

Also, that cartoon segment was originally meant for another cartoon called Heavy Metal, it just ended up in the Holiday Special.

According to my father, it's, in fact, entirely possible the character of Boba Fett was inspired by the old "Space Hunter" 5 or 6 shot subseries in the Heavy Metal issues of the late 70's. The character went through parodied versions of sci-fi movies and epics (Buck Rogers and such) and basically screwed over people like "Duke Starhopper" and "Princess Fileta" regularly. He believes the Boba Fett animation bit in the Holiday special is actually a scene that was axed from the Heavy Metal movie not because they were afraid of being sued by Lucas or anything for the mock characters; but because Nelvana declined being the studio for Heavy Metal.

The original animatic for the Space hunter sequence remained in their vaults and was later recycled into the Holiday Special.

I, for one, don't think Space hunter was a direct inspiration for Boba's personality, but McQuarrie was a semi-regular contributor to Heavy Metal. According to my father and Corben, McQuarrie designed the Space hunter. The fact that he re-used an incredibly similar appearance later is of no consequence although debated.

McQuarrie himself disavowed all connection to Heavy Metal when he became a Born-Again a long time ago, so he's sure not answering questions about it.

Somewhere in there lies the truth, but watching the Boba bit again pretty much secures it in my mind: that was definitely part of Nelvana artist's original pitch to management about doing Heavy Metal. In fact, many of Nelvana's artists 'defected' and worked on Heavy Metal under pseudonyms anyway, so there may have been a more last-second reason why the sequence got canixed and re-used later.

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Re: Holiday Special

Sadriel_Fett wrote:

I had never heard that before. Very cool info.

The problem is that none of it's written down, I think Corben is DEAD, and McQuarrie isn't talking. Nobody involved with Heavy Metal had the slightest inkling of the success it would become, and the print we have "restored" to DVD isn't even from the original; that was thrown out. It's from a theatrical print that someone found in a can. And this was in an era where movie prints were commonly recycled for elements, so we're lucky it survived at all or we'd be stuck forever with that awful VHS release.

Basically all we have to go on is a man in his 50's who may not even be remembering correctly who was friends with people formerly at Nelvana and Heavy Metal. So while it is information, it's also unfortunately absolutely unprovable so if this were Snopes, there'd be a Yellow button next to the listing for this. About the only thing that can be "proven" out of all of the above is that

A) Nelvana internally had a sequence for Heavy Metal, and declined to be involved.

B) Nelvana commonly re-used bits and pieces of incomplete things.

c) Nelvana dropped out of contributing to Heavy Metal at the last minute to do Rock and Rule.

D) Han Solo in the Holiday special Boba cartoon looks a LOT like a parody of Han Solo.

E) Boba looks kinda like the Space Hunter.

You can glean from these details that the above MAY be true, but you can't actually prove anything.. and amongst Star Wars history it's hard to "prove" anything anyway, as Lucas is prone to make attempts at retconning _reality_ when he feels like it.

Remember: In the 80's Lucas used to pretend the Holiday special never existed. Period. Anyone who asked him about it, he had no idea what they were talking about. It wasn't until fans started bootlegging it around that he had to admit that it did, in fact, actually exist.

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Re: Holiday Special

I was trying to look for pics of "the space hunter" online but I couldn't find any. I don't actually own a copy of Heavy Metal. That would be my dad and it might be a while till I can get my hands on it because he lives all the way across the next state. I haven't seen it in a few years... I think it's time to get my own copy. (Rambling out loud, heh)

And holy crap, Rock and Rule! XD That was such a trippy movie. I saw it for the first time last year(?).

Re: Holiday Special

Ah, the Holiday Special, bane of my existence. I watched it and was like, this is the most stupid thing I have ever seen. Then I came to the Boba Fett section and I thought, this awesome, but still stupid. So what do I do after that? I willingly watch it again.

Re: Holiday Special

Dinilakeeramud wrote:

Ah, the Holiday Special, bane of my existence. I watched it and was like, this is the most stupid thing I have ever seen. Then I came to the Boba Fett section and I thought, this awesome, but still stupid. So what do I do after that? I willingly watch it again.

Re: Holiday Special

This past Christmas morning I watched the rifftrax version of the Star Wars Holiday Special for the very first time and I have to tell you that it wasn't that bad. Now the teenage mutant ninja turtles 1993 holiday special is running-out-of-the-room embarrassing! Just horribly bad!